Ruben Sikkes

Utopia

Over human history great efforts have been made in making things easier. The idea of farming for example resulted in less time being needed to look for food. Ways were also created to keep ourselves warm without even doing anything. Think of creating fire and wearing clothes. The possibility of writing lowered the loss of intelligence over generations and things that had to be remembered. Nowadays this grew even further as we barely have to remember anything as Google is one of our biggest suppliers of information. Walking is also one of those things that have become optional as we can get anywhere by some sort of vehicle. Even people that would’ve died in the past because of illnesses are able to live thanks to medical developments. Are we then not already in utopia if we can do so many astonishing things? Cure (some sorts of) cancer, send people to space, create farms so big that food is easily available and have the ability to go anywhere in the world in reasonable time ? Even though all these things are available in the world, this does not mean that everyone currently has the same accessibility. Your parents and place you are born are still very important.

In order to create true equality in the world and reach utopia a lot of things would have to change. First and foremost everyone should be treated the same as currently racism and racial discrimination is still a big problem. In my opinion the key factor behind racism is that there are still very big differences in culture, maintained through borders and thinking on a national level instead of global. The identity of every human should become that of someone from earth instead of from an individual country. No person should be bound by any border and everyone should have access to the same services. One of the aspects serious games could address is racism and racial discrimination. Through for example serious virtual reality games, prejudicis could be lessened.

What would be the consequences if all were equal? If all people in the world would currently be living the way people are in Western countries, the world would be too small. There would not be enough resources in the world to compensate the enormous demand. A second key factor that would have to be addressed in order to reach utopia, would therefore be to solve this problem. Reliable and sustainable ways will have to be developed to keep up with demand but not deplete the world in the process. Ways will have to be developed to ensure future generations do not fall victim of the demand laid on the planet in the present.

A different issue that will have to discussed is the increasing capability of robots taking on human labour. Robots will take on more and more processes. Since serious games are a reliable and fun way of teaching people new things. Serious games could in the future be used to reschool people.

The question if utopia will ever be reached is a tough one. Utopia if a matter of perspective and to be honest the idea of every individual being truly equal and money and power no longer corrupting this world, seems really far fetched. The idea of a psychical state of utopia seems unlikely but to quote Charles Spurgeon;” It’s not It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness“. Maybe utopia is then only a state of mind and in that case, it is actually accessible to everyone, everywhere and anytime.